It was in 2005 that the celebrated Guitar Hero landed on the Playstation2 and ignited a music and rhythm explosion that dominated the video game industry for several white-hot years of mainstream success. Since that time we’ve seen the genre slow down into more of a niche category where the libraries of songs that you can sing, play and drum along with have grown, but the frequency of people gathering for a round of Rock Band or Singstar has slowed down a bit.

For the musically inclined though the toy plastic guitars, real drumsticks and sturdy microphones of that era can be put in proper perspective now. The Wii U has a couple of sing-a-long type games coming up but for the most part the competition between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises gave us some of the best expressions of the genre and we want to help you keep track of it all.

Pitch Perfect is in theaters nationwide as you read this and all of that a cappella singing got us to thinking about the Top Singing and Rhythm Games of the 21st Century. Click through the gallery and it’ll be like a stroll through recent musical video game history.